Former Clemson Coach Waited Decade To Watch 'The Shot' By Tate George

December 21, 2013

Remember the priceless reactions when Tate George hit "The Shot"? There was, of course, a mad UConn celebration, George with his arms raised, Jim Calhoun running around on the court. Those images captured the joy. On the other side, images of Clemson coach Cliff Ellis and center Elden Campbell captured the heartache. Both stood still, in stone-faced disbelief. Ellis, now coach at Coastal Carolina, was in New Britain Saturday for a game at Central Connecticut. Central coach Howie Dickenman was, of course, an assistant on that 1989-90 UConn team.

"It took me 10 years to watch it," Ellis said after his team won at Central in improbable fashion, thanks to a late four-point play. "It was an ESPN Classic. My daughter called up and said, 'The game is on. It's time for you to watch it if you want to watch it.' It was 10 years. I was at Auburn at the time. We had just come off an SEC championship, so I was feeling good, and I watched it. It still hurt. The toughest loss, overall, that I've probably endured."

So, on the day after spring officially ended, an unseasonably warm Saturday, came news that assured a long, dark, cold winter for the Brooklyn Nets. Leading scorer Brook Lopez is out for the season with a broken foot. Look, the Nets' bold offseason acquisitions of aging, former stars Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett was a failure, in our eyes, anyway. The team, despite showing some life of late, wasn't going anywhere. The Lopez injury will simply push the Nets from almost mediocre to not-quite-terrible, maybe get them into the lottery -- a pick they no longer own, of course. … Ladies and gentlemen, your latest overpaid pretty-good-but-not-great outfielder: Shin-Soo Choo. He reportedly agreed to a seven-year, $130 million contract with the Rangers. His career per-season averages after eight seasons, mostly with the Indians: .288, 11 home runs, 85 RBI.

Here's something you don't hear very often: A deal fell through due to the results of a physical, typically viewed as a formality after a free agent agrees with a team. The Orioles are passing on closer Grant Balfour for unspecified reasons. They had tentatively agreed on a two-year, $15 million deal. Balfour, 35, missed 2005 and 2006 with shoulder/elbow surgeries but had 62 saves the last two seasons for the A's. … Four SEC football programs were found in violation of an artificial noisemaker policy and fined. Our first thought was that this was a case of conference officials overanalyzing and overreacting. Then we thought about how difficult it might be to sit next to students with cowbells or air horns. … Joakim Noah admits he made a mistake by entering the Thunder locker room Thursday and calling Oklahoma City's Kendrick Perkins, who confronted him, "an angry dude." Right on both. Noah shouldn't have entered. But maybe Perkins overreacted, too.